Sunday, January 25, 2015

Into that Quarter Where Never Had Man Been – Part II

Continuing from the
last post regarding the two important issues involved in the Lord’s statement:
“that quarter where there never had man
been.” These are: 1) An understanding of the word “quarter” (see last post),
and 2) an understanding of the term “where there never had man been.”

Anciently there were four quarters of the
Earth, made up of the four continents: 1) Africa, 2) America, 3) Asia, and 4)
Europe. Before the Western Hemisphere was discovered, maps referred to the
three parts of the Earth, but afterward, America was the fourth part or quarterThe quarter where
people have never been had nothing to do with where the Jaredites traveled, but
where they ended up—in the Land of Promise. To understand this, we need to look
at the territory surrounding Mesopotamia and the Jaredite homeland.First of all, history
and biblical writing both show that people after the Flood “filled the earth.”
Hebrew “mala” means to fill, not
replenish—therefore, Noah and his sons were commanded to “Be fruitful,
multiply, and fill the earth:
(Genesis 9:1). Secondly, with the Earth “divided,” and oceans “divided the
lands” (Ether 2:13), that “quarter” of the land (a term used anciently to mean
the four quarters of the earth), that no one had occupied since the Flood was
the Western Hemisphere—the Land of Promise. Thirdly, in the direction north and
east of Mesopotamia, along the Theorists eastern route, nearly all the sons of
Japheth settled long before the Jaredite period.When Noah and his family stepped out of the Ark, they were
the only people on Earth. It fell to Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth,
and their wives, to repopulate, or “fill” the Earth through their children and
grandchildren. Of Noah’s grandchildren, 16 grandsons are named in Genesis
chapter 10.Since the Bible provides their exact names, we can follow
their expansion and that of their children and grandchildren as they established
the various regions of the ancient world between the time of the Flood and the
Jaredites.It should also be understood that the first generations
after the Flood lived to be very old, with some outliving their children,
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, which set them apart. The sixteen
grandsons of Noah were the heads of their family clans, which became large
populations in their respective areas, and as time passed, three things
happened that help us trace their movements and settlement areas:1. People often called themselves by the name of the man who
was their common ancestor.2. People called their land, and often their major city and
major river, by his name.3. People sometimes fell into ancestor worship, resulting in
naming their pagan gods after their ancestor(s).

All of this means that the evidence of these people and
their locations have been preserved in a way that can never be lost, and all
the ingenuity of man cannot erase. As an example, looking at Noah’s grandsons
through Japheth:Gomer. Ezekiel
locates the early descendants of Gomer, along with his son, (Noah’s
great-grandson) Togarmah, in the north
quarters (Ezekiel 38:6). Gomer settled to the north of Mesopotamia, from
the southern shores to the northern shores of the Black Sea. Togarmah settled
between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. During New Testament times in the area of modern Turkey was an region called Galatia. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus records that the
people who were called Galatians or Gauls in his day (93 A.D.) were previously
called Gomerites. Their descendants migrated westward to what
are now France and Spain. For many centuries France was called Gaul, after the
descendants of Gomer, and Northwest Spain is called Galicia to this day. Some
of the Gomerites migrated further to what is now called Wales, which has an
ancient belief that the descendants of Gomer ‘landed on the Isle of Britain
from France, about three hundred years after the flood,’ and the
Welsh language was called Gomeraeg (after their ancestor Gomer). Other members
of their clan settled along the way, including in Armenia, which claimes descendancy from Gomer’s sons Ashkenaz, and
Riphath. Ancient Armenia reached into Turkey, which name probably comes from
Togarmah. Others of them migrated to Germany, as Ashkenaz is the Hebrew
word for Germany.

Magog. Japheth’s son Magog lived in
the north parts (Ezekiel 38:15; 39:2). Josephus records that those whom
he called Magogites, the Greeks called Scythians, and the ancient name for the
region, which now includes part of Romania
and the Ukraine, was Scythia.Madai. Along with Shem’s son Elam,
Madai is the ancestor of our modern-day Iranians. Josephus says that the
descendants of Madai were called Medes by the Greeks—every time the Medes are mentioned
in the Old Testament, the word used is the Hebrew name Madai. After the
time of Cyrus, the Medes are, with one exception, always mentioned along with
the Persians. They became one kingdom with one law—‘the law of the Medes and
Persians’ (Daniel 6:8,12,15). Later they were simply called Persians. Since 1935 they have called
their country Iran. Javan. The name of the next grandson,
Javan, is the Hebrew word for Greece, with Grecia, or Grecians
appearing five times in the Old Testament as Javan. Daniel refers to the king of Grecia (Daniel 8:21), literally
the king of Javan. His sons were
Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim (Genesis 10:4), all of whom have
connections with the Greek people. The Elysians (an ancient Greek people)
received their name from Elishah. Tarshish or Tarsus was located in the region
of Cilicia (modern Turkey), and Kittim is the biblical name for Cyprus. The people who
initially settled around the area of Troy worshipped Jupiter under the name of
Jupiter Dodonaeus, an obvious reference to the fourth son of Javan, with
Jupiter a derivative of Japheth. His oracle was at Dodena (The Greeks also worshipped
this god under the name Zeus).Tubal. Ezekiel mentions Tubal along
with Gog and Meshech (Ezekiel 39:1). Tiglath-pileser I, king of Assyria in
about 1100 B.C., refers to the descendants of Tubal as the Tabali, and Josephus
recorded their name as the Thobelites, who were later known as Iberes.Josephus said their land was called Iberia, by the Romans,
and covered what is now Georgia,whose
capital Tbilisi (Tubal). They also gave their tribal name in the northeast to
the river Tobol, and to the famous city of Tobolsk.Meshech. The next grandson is the
ancient name of both the capital and surrounding city of Moscow. To this day, one section is
still called the Meshchera Lowland. According to Josephus, the descendants of the
grandson Tiras were called Thirasians, which the Greeks changed to Thracians.
Anciently, Thrace reached from Macedonia
on the south to the Danube River on the north, and to the Black Sea on the east,
taking in much of what became Yugoslavia.
The people of Thrace were known as savage Indo-Europeans, who liked warfare and
looting, and Tiras was worshipped by his descendants as Thuras, or Thor, the
god of thunder. Certainly, none of these areas around Mesopotamia in any direction could have been called a "quarter where never had man been" during the time of the Jaredites.(See the next post, “Into that
Quarter Where Never Had Man Been – Part III,” for a continuation of the spread
of Noah’s grandchildren and its meaning to the Jaredites)